Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Why would Ineos take on 3,500 people at Swindon, when they only needed 200 initially and only up to 500 people? Pure nonsense.
As a result of this, Portugal is also losing out on the proposed plant for making the bodies and chassis. Has Portugal been affected by Brexit?

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Brexit news live: UK and EU 'on the precipice' of trade talks collapse, says Irish PM - ahead of Johnson's Brussels trip
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-ne...ssels-12155941

---------- Post added at 17:25 ---------- Previous post was at 17:18 ----------

I'm not sure that kind of negative thinking is what is needed in Brexit Britain. We need to be seizing opportunities and thinking through how things can be achieved and not how they can't.
Ineos could have taken on those staff it needs and build up from that. If it does assembly work for Honda then I'm sure an agreement can be made for the necessary staff to stay on as long as needed and Honda can then fund their redundancy payments. Pure strawman nonsense to suggest they would all be taken on.

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

12/10 on the irony scale

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Indeed, that's more brass neck than a Victorian bath tap;)

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Pritti Patel called. She would like her calculator back. ;)

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Liam Fox, 2017

Financial Times, 9th December 2020
https://www.ft.com/content/fb655185-...f-fbe97176c891

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Here's an interesting one . More 'Project Fear' from the Torygraph I should think, they're always at it ..

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ary-1/#comment

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

BoJo's dad won't be happy. How's one meant to check up on one's villa in Greece?

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Yup. It should have been. However the EU assumed we would bargain for extremely extensive single market engagement and lined up its demands in anticipation of that. In the event Britain has aimed for a far more modest trade deal, akin to that arranged with Canada. However the EU appears not to have recognised that if they give away less they get less in return.

Their demands for continuing regulatory alignment are absurd, as is their expectation that we would cede sovereignty over our maritime exclusive economic area. So yes, Liam Fox was absolutely right in 2017. It *should* have been easy. The EU has signed trade deals with countries that are not, and never will be, in any way aligned with its rule book.

There’s no real mystery as to why it hasn’t worked out as far as the EU is concerned - it simply lacks the philosophical ability to accommodate the idea that any country would choose to walk away from its grand unifying project. The UK has upended some quasi-religious assumptions on the continent and it simply doesn’t compute. The only real mystery is why anyone on this side of the channel is still blind to it.

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Likewise, the EU have always stated (since 2016) the importance of the Single Market, and would resist any efforts to undermine this - the only real mystery is why anyone on this side of the channel is still blind to it... ;)

It may have been because BoJo said back in 2016 we would still have access to the Single Market?

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-br...on-idUKKCN0ZC1

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

You’re being somewhat loose with your definitions. Unintentionally I’m sure.

“Access to” can mean almost anything. WTO is access to the single market. *No* access to the single market would be a complete ban on British goods and services being sold into the EEA, which is clearly an absurd proposition that would never happen.

However even if we allow that by “access to” Boris was talking about “preferential access to” (and that’s by no means certain, because a lot of prominent Remainers in 2016 were happily using the phrase “no access to” and allowing the impression to be formed that there might be a total ban on British goods - he may simply have been responding to just such a disingenuous comment) then his statement would still have been perfectly reasonable. Every international trade deal the EU has signed gives preferential access to the single market in some form or other. There was no reason to believe the EU would demand an extensive deal or nothing.

At the end of the day, in any negotiation if the price is too high you walk away. What you don’t do is allow the other side to believe you’ll eventually sign any deal rather than no deal.

International trade deals typically rely on mutual recognition of standards. Those that go further, only insist that goods produced for export are produced to the same standard as domestic products in the target market. That is a perfectly acceptable definition of protecting the single market. What the EU is trying to do is to ensure regulatory alignment so that British businesses can’t find ways of operating more efficiently, regardless of the standard of the finished goods and regardless of whether those goods are destined for the EU or not. That is totally absurd and misses the whole point of Brexit. They are terms not imposed on anyone else.

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What seems under-reported to me is that whatever is agreed or not agreed this weekend, Northern Ireland will still be subject to EU rules and the jurisdiction of the ECJ. So, we've not really got the sovereignty of the UK back.

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

Northern Ireland is a millstone that in the long run is destined to drift into the Republic. Demographics will see to it even if European politics doesn’t. And British sovereignty there was compromised years ago as a necessary condition of the peace process. There was no functioning executive in Stormont from 2017 to 2019 yet the place was run by the Northern Ireland Civil Service (which is independent of the British home civil service that, internally, treats its Scottish and Welsh operations as departments just like all the others). The British Government could have restored direct rule but it was considered too politically difficult to do. The British Government chose not to exert its authority in part of its own sovereign territory. That really ought to set the present situation in some sort of context.

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20
 

It does feel like No Deal now. If this were about dramatics and last moment deal-making then you think it would be leading to 'crunch talks' between the leaders in Europe with a last-minute agreement being reached 2 am Monday morning.

Instead, it just feels like it's petering out. It's been kicked up to the negotiating teams with an extended deadline and no momentum. As if they all know it's over but just can't bring themselves to dramatically say it, maybe hoping the other side declares it over first.

Re: Brexit-Transitional Period Ends 31/12/20